Straw Dogs and Robinson Jeffers

Posted on April 29, 2005 by Dave Pollard
johngrayPerhaps once a year I discover a book so remarkable that I end up highlighting passages on every page. I’m just reading one such book now, Straw Dogs, by London School of Economics professor John Gray, which I will present a review of on Monday. Here’s a poem by Robinson Jeffers included in the book, just to give you a flavour. I can’t find a record of which reader recommended it to me (there’s no search capability for the Userland comments server), so whoever did so, thank you!

only
tormented persons want truth.
Man is like other animals, wants food and success and
women,
not truth. Only if the mind
Tortured of some interior tension has despaired of
happiness:
then it hates
its life-cage and seeks further.

Lots more on Monday.

This entry was posted in Our Culture / Ourselves. Bookmark the permalink.

3 Responses to Straw Dogs and Robinson Jeffers

  1. Mike says:
    April 29, 2005 at 10:19

    I had an unintended ‘wow – that rocks’ moment when I searched amazon for this book and notice the tons of new stuff: Concordance, text stats, citations of other books.Of course these days, if you follow internet tech like I do, you get close to a paradigm-shifting moment once or twice a week.

  2. Aleah says:
    April 29, 2005 at 15:01

    To a certain extent, I agree with these lines and in my misanthropic youth, would have composed similar lines. However, I would say now that I am joyful and am still seeking answers. Perhaps part of the joy comes from learning that there is no one, finite version of truth. I no longer feel compelled to force or defend my version of it.

  3. John says:
    April 21, 2007 at 10:56

    Straw Dogs is one of those few, truly honest and insightful attempts. It seems very much that Gray came under the influence of the Tao Te Ching and Robinson Jeffers, and decided to bring this thought into the study of philosophy.

Comments are closed.